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I'm Stephen Metcalf and this is the Slate CultureGabFest

0:41

Barbenheimer Blockbuster Bonanza

0:43

Edition. It's Wednesday, July 26,

0:46

2023 on today's show. Barbie,

0:49

it's Greta Gerwig's movie about the iconic

0:52

toy doll from Mattel. It stars

0:54

Margot Robbie as the stereotypical

0:56

blonde bombshell and

0:58

Ryan Gosling as her, I

1:01

don't know, let's even call him boyfriend

1:03

Ken, I suppose. Just Ken.

1:05

Just Ken. It's in theaters. And

1:08

as we speak, it's breaking box office records.

1:10

And then Oppenheimer is a sprawling biopic

1:13

from writer, director Christopher Nolan. It stars

1:15

Cillian Murphy as the so-called

1:17

father of the atomic bomb. likely

1:20

sibling Barbie. It's helping to break box

1:23

office records as well. And

1:25

finally, the country singer Jason

1:27

Aldean has a song called Try That

1:29

in a Small Town. Safe to say it's a compilation

1:31

of racist dog whistles. We

1:34

discuss the unfolding controversy with Slate's

1:36

own Chris Malamfi.

1:38

Joining me today is Julia Turner of the LA

1:40

Times. Hey, Julia. Hello, hello. And

1:43

of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic for Slate.

1:45

Hey, Dana. Hey, greetings. I'm,

1:47

we're so excited, right? We're in Portmanteau.

1:50

We're day here at the Gab Fest.

1:55

It wasn't hard to pick the order to do these and you got

1:57

to start with Barbie. It's such a huge hit.

1:59

So the new movie Barbie, it stars Margot Robbie

2:02

as the quote unquote stereotypical

2:05

Barbie. That means she's tall, live,

2:09

buxom, very blonde, and her feet

2:11

are molded permanently to slip into high

2:13

heels. And as she herself says in

2:15

the course of the movie, no genitals.

2:19

Then suddenly out of nowhere, flickers of existential

2:21

dread begin to cross her otherwise sunshine

2:24

drenched mind. She and her male counterpart

2:26

Ken eventually cross over

2:28

into the human world to discover why this

2:30

is happening, only to discover something

2:32

missing from Barbie land

2:35

that we call the patriarchy.

2:38

In addition to Robbie and Gosling, there's a huge ensemble

2:40

cast. Kate McKinnon's wonderful. A bunch of people

2:42

will discuss. The movie of course

2:45

comes from the director Greta Gerwig of Lady

2:47

Bird and Little Women. It's co-written with her

2:49

partner Noah Baumbach. In the clip

2:51

we're about to hear, three different Barbies are tending

2:53

to Ken after he gets into a surfing

2:56

accident. You'll hear Margot Robbie,

2:58

Harry Neff, and Alexandra Shipp as

3:00

the three Barbies and of course Ryan

3:02

Gosling as Ken.

3:04

Let's listen. Shredding waves is much

3:07

more dangerous than people realize. You're very

3:09

brave Ken. Thank

3:11

you Barbie. Yeah. You know surfer

3:13

is not even my job. I know. And

3:15

it is not lifeguard, which is a common

3:17

misconception. Very common. Yeah,

3:20

he's actually my

3:22

job. It's just beach. Right.

3:24

And what a good job you do at beach. You should

3:26

heal up in no time. Actually in the time that

3:28

it took for me to say that sentence, you healed.

3:30

Fantastic. Nice. Hey

3:34

Barbie. Yeah. Can I come to your house tonight?

3:36

Sure. I don't have anything big planned, just a giant blowout

3:38

party with all the Barbies and plant choreography in a bespoke

3:40

song. You should stop by.

3:41

So cool. Yeah.

3:44

Okay. Bye. Okay.

3:47

Bye. Goodbye. Dana, I'll

3:49

start with you. I mean, where do you even begin

3:52

with this movie? It's just

3:54

smashing records right at the box office

3:57

and seems to be by and large... critically

4:01

beloved and embraced by audiences, what would

4:03

you make of this movie? I mean, I feel like before

4:05

I even get into my response to the movie, Qua

4:07

Movie, which I will certainly do, we just have

4:09

to address, it's almost a topic of its own,

4:12

just, Barbenheimer, the

4:14

massive weekend that these two movies had,

4:16

and the way that the rising tide of each

4:18

lifted the other's boat, and just the

4:21

thing that happened at the box office this weekend, which

4:23

was just so stunning. And,

4:25

you know, I think the fourth biggest box office weekend

4:28

of all time, Greta Gerwig

4:30

is the first female director to

4:32

crush the box office to this extent. It's sort of by far

4:35

the most successful movie commercially directed

4:37

by a woman. I mean, just endless

4:40

more records. I just read as we were starting to tape that

4:42

Barbie just broke the Monday record for the studio

4:44

Warner Brothers, and I love this detail, the movie

4:47

that it beat, the previous Warner Brothers movie,

4:49

to have had the biggest Monday box office of

4:51

all time, was Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.

4:53

So, you know, there's just this great reversal of the

4:55

patriarchy happening in the reception

4:57

that echoes what happens in the movie, and that has

4:59

been so much fun and so energizing

5:02

to watch, you know, people's enthusiasm about

5:04

both films. Okay, but to get to Barbie itself,

5:08

yeah, I am

5:09

thoroughly in the Barbie pro category,

5:12

even though I can acknowledge some of the things that this movie

5:14

maybe tries to do and doesn't do, it maybe tries

5:16

to do a little bit too much, and

5:19

we can get in to that. But essentially,

5:21

I really am hoping that people listening to this segment

5:23

who are saying something like, this

5:25

is just an attempt to sell toys,

5:27

or, you know, I don't like Barbies, I didn't play

5:29

with them when I was a kid, or, you know, I

5:31

just, this is over marketed, whatever. If you have

5:34

some sort of Barbie cynicism, consider

5:36

trying to get over it and just enjoy a really,

5:39

really funny musical comedy with incredible

5:42

songs, incredible design, and

5:44

just a kind of gloriously

5:46

original weird sensibility. Like

5:48

this movie is total, total fun

5:51

to watch, and so I really want people

5:53

who have some sort of cynical guardrail

5:56

against trying it out

5:58

to go and check it out in the theater. Julia,

6:01

what did you make of the movie? Oh

6:03

man, this movie is so much fun.

6:06

I saw it with my 10 year old sons and my

6:08

husband. The 10 year old sons

6:10

were mildly dragged

6:12

along and actually we were in the elevator

6:14

at the Sherman Oaks Regal Galleria and

6:18

some other people in the elevator were like, what are you guys going

6:20

to see? Cause it was full of peppy, zippy,

6:23

everybody's at the movies energy. My

6:25

boys were like embarrassed to say

6:27

they were going to see Barbie, which was actually

6:30

maybe my first experience

6:32

of them performing some kind of

6:34

gendered self-consciousness. I was like, oh God,

6:37

we're getting them to the Barbie movie just in time.

6:41

Ryan Gosling to the rescue. Exactly.

6:43

They really liked it. And then afterwards

6:46

one of my sons was like, I feel like I

6:48

would have liked that movie more if

6:51

I was a woman in my forties who played

6:53

with Barbies. I

6:56

was like, correct. But

6:59

one of the things that is most striking about

7:01

it and most interesting about

7:03

it is that it

7:06

is so generous to women and

7:08

men. And in fact takes

7:11

the problem of masculinity as seriously

7:13

as it

7:13

does the problem

7:15

of femininity.

7:17

And it's just, it's a very human

7:20

film. Like, and that's, I

7:22

can't decide on some level whether to be, I

7:24

think mostly I am

7:26

moved and admiring that it does that. There's

7:28

also something that feels a little bit

7:31

off or something about

7:34

the idea that Barbie finally gets

7:36

a movie and it's really about

7:38

the emotions of Ken, but it's also

7:40

about the emotions of Barbie. So I

7:43

don't know. I was impressed by

7:45

the movie's wisdom as well as its

7:47

wit. Wait, I just have one little

7:50

pushback to the idea that it's more about

7:52

Ken than Barbie. I mean, I just feel like what

7:54

is so, so smart about this screenplay and the way

7:56

that it does have an important arc, emotional

7:59

arc for Ryan Gosling. links Ken, is that it is

8:01

really about, and this speaks to your two boys in

8:03

the elevator hesitating whether it was cool to see

8:05

Barbie, Julia, it is

8:07

really about how patriarchy harms everyone,

8:10

right? It harms men just as much as women.

8:12

And I absolutely love the arc that his

8:14

character gets. And to me, the high point of the movie, which

8:16

makes me wish it was more of a musical, is the song

8:18

Just Ken, that sort of, you know, his big

8:21

existential crisis moment, which is staged

8:23

like an old MGM musical.

8:25

I'm just Ken, anywhere

8:28

else I'd be a 10. Is

8:30

it my destiny to

8:32

live and die a life

8:35

of long virginity?

8:39

I'm just Ken.

8:40

And Brian Gosling is utterly

8:42

Oscar worthy as Ken. So even though

8:44

I agree that it is a movie for women, about women, by

8:46

women, and that is what's so wonderful about its

8:48

success, I also want people to know

8:50

that it has a really significant

8:53

male character who is also anguished about

8:55

gender issues in a wonderful way. No, like if

8:57

you, Greta Gerwig is too smart

8:59

to not give a real arc to Ken. And

9:02

yes, you can't understand Barbie's oppression

9:04

without also understanding Ken's oppression.

9:06

Like, it's just funny

9:08

that the movie made by the woman has to

9:10

go immediately to deep wisdom

9:14

that considers all

9:16

of humanity as opposed to just giving

9:18

us the female version of Oppenheimer, where

9:21

like there are two men in it and neither

9:23

of them is real in any way.

9:25

That's true. We still need that.

9:27

We need more movies with flat male characters

9:29

to make up for a

9:32

century of the reverse. We skipped

9:34

the step

9:34

where we made that movie.

9:37

But bear in mind, she did co-write the movie with her,

9:40

I guess, romantic partner, what do we

9:42

call him now, Noah Baumbach. So that's

9:44

one of the reasons why I think it is

9:47

balanced as it is gender wise.

9:49

Gostling is just so incredibly

9:52

good in the movie. I didn't realize what

9:54

a fabulous dancer he is. There

9:57

were definitely moments when I worried that he was almost

9:59

dealing the movie, which

10:02

seemed totally inappropriate,

10:04

but those were relatively

10:07

minor.

10:07

But I think Margot Robbie is also incredible.

10:10

She's terrific in the movie. I want to see it again just for her physicality,

10:12

because there's so much going on in this movie, which is arguably,

10:15

my review does say, it's arguably too

10:17

busy, and I don't think the human parts of the movie work

10:19

as well as the doll parts. But there's so

10:21

much going on that I didn't pay attention to details

10:23

like the way Margot Robbie holds

10:25

herself in a doll-like way. I'm

10:27

thinking about a scene where she's- It's incredible. Her

10:31

long legs straight out in front of her. And if

10:33

you can imagine a Barbie sitting up that just topples

10:35

over to the side without any of the joints moving,

10:38

she just does that perfectly. And

10:40

it's important to mention, I think, that in a way, this is Margot

10:42

Robbie's movie as much as Greta Gerwig's. Oh, I agree.

10:45

She's a producer, not just in the sense that actors will

10:47

often have a producer credit, but she had the

10:49

idea of doing this. And a wonderful story

10:51

in The New Yorker by Alex Barish that we read

10:54

for prep that's all about Mattel and

10:56

the toy movie synergy at Mattel, which

10:58

is in some ways a somewhat menacing

11:01

story about the future of toy movies. Anyway,

11:04

it recounts Margot Robbie coming up with the idea

11:06

and going around shopping it around to people. So it

11:08

was her that went to Greta Gerwig and said, "'Let's

11:10

do this together.'" And I really feel like her

11:13

creative force is quite evident in the movie.

11:15

Yeah. Yes. For

11:17

all the fun of the movie, it is

11:19

existential dread that she

11:21

begins to feel, and the movie's quite

11:24

pointed about that. She

11:26

can't quite believe she's having these highly

11:29

complicated, deeply shadowed

11:31

emotions in Barbie Land. And that's

11:33

what initially motivates her

11:35

exit

11:36

from it into the human world. And I thought that

11:38

that was an interesting piece of deep

11:40

wisdom about patriarchy

11:42

on the part of the movie. You have

11:45

this doll that's always been both things.

11:47

It's always been a would-be feminist

11:49

icon. She's a career woman in

11:52

most of her incarnations.

11:55

The Barbie doll, but she's also this inhumanly

11:57

proportioned,

11:58

you know, ridiculous.

12:00

pseudo-ideal of a certain kind

12:02

of, I mean, to be honest, you know, super thin

12:04

waist and blizzamy. I mean, it's

12:06

just a ridiculous,

12:08

in some way, ridiculous thing for young girls

12:10

to be playing with. And I

12:13

think the movie is very wise in binding

12:15

up.

12:16

It's fuck you to the patriarchy with

12:19

a kind of existential wisdom, which is she

12:21

is escaping the status of being an object

12:24

in a way that I thought played off

12:26

of the Barbie form,

12:28

like literally this plastic

12:31

doll that's inhumanly proportioned

12:33

in highly sexual ways. There's no

12:35

other one. There's a reason why Barbie

12:38

is a synonym for a certain kind of

12:40

physical quote unquote ideal. And

12:42

I thought bringing those two together was going

12:45

way beyond anything predictably

12:47

knee jerk.

12:48

Right, Steve, I mean, in a way, Barbie's longing

12:51

to become real comes from a long

12:53

tradition in children's literature, right?

12:55

The Velveteen Rabbit or Pinocchio of a toy

12:58

that longs to become real. But because

13:00

of the status of Barbie

13:02

as this sexualized adult woman, that takes

13:05

on a different twist in the movie that I won't

13:07

give it away, but the final line is essentially a riff,

13:09

a very funny riff on exactly that. Of

13:12

course, the critique that would present itself is, well,

13:14

this is in fact a Mattel

13:17

collaboration, you know, so things

13:18

can only get so dark and so existential,

13:21

right? We can't ultimately burn down

13:23

Barbie Land at the end of this movie, right?

13:25

So there is a way in which this movie

13:27

has to remain both, you know, an upbeat

13:30

child friendly, which I think it completely is, you

13:33

know, kids and adults could really enjoy this movie together.

13:35

It has to be that kind of, you know, affirming

13:38

movie about Barbie while Trojan

13:40

horsing in both feminism and some

13:42

of these bigger, more existential

13:45

concerns. I think it does a really nice

13:47

job of balancing those two things with a light touch,

13:49

you know, but I definitely have seen some pushback against

13:52

the movie with, you know, the idea that it's some sort

13:54

of cynical capitalist collaboration.

13:56

My response to that would essentially be, so

13:59

then are we putting...

13:59

Toy Story and every Disney

14:02

movie that has tie-in merchandise and you know every

14:04

movie ever that has been allied in some

14:06

way with some Sort of saleable object

14:09

into that same bucket and are we applying the

14:11

same purity standard? I think there's kind of a

14:13

sexism and suddenly coming along and saying

14:15

oh well now that a woman had big success

14:18

suddenly You know we're blaring the international

14:20

on sound trucks in the street like why

14:22

weren't we doing that all along? You

14:25

know I think if it felt like

14:27

the parts of the movie

14:30

That articulate the pro

14:32

story for Barbie Felt

14:36

false emotionally or felt not

14:38

believed by the movie in its vision It

14:41

wouldn't work, but the argument

14:43

that the film puts forth I mean,

14:45

this is what's just so absolutely clever about

14:47

its structure Is that

14:50

in fact Barbie was revolutionary and

14:53

the reason that Barbie was popular Is

14:55

that Barbie was the first doll

14:57

that

14:58

Instead of giving girls

15:01

a baby to play with gave them

15:03

a grown-up to imagine being and

15:05

they got to imagine themselves as president And they got

15:08

to imagine themselves as a deeply

15:10

desirable sexual object which like

15:13

You know complicated, but not

15:15

also part of life like anyway,

15:18

it it I

15:20

Did not come away feeling like there

15:22

were a bunch of meetings where Greta

15:24

Gerwig had to add those elements to the

15:26

film It's it felt it

15:29

felt quite free even though

15:31

not everything it said about Barbie was

15:34

Negative yeah, absolutely free

15:37

is a good word for it And I think audiences are responding

15:39

to that with you know huge huge enthusiasm Which

15:41

makes me feel happy and free and

15:44

sunshiney and upbeat about the future of

15:45

movies Yeah, I like that feeling all those things

15:48

too okay? It's Barbie if you haven't seen

15:50

a three huge thumbs up Check

15:53

it out and let us know what you thought let's move on

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All right, before we go any further, this is typically

17:23

where we discuss business. Dana, what

17:26

do you have? I'm your

17:28

host, Stephen. We just have one item of business this week. That is to tell

17:30

listeners about our Slate Plus segment, which this week will be a

17:32

behind-the-scenes glimpse at the prep for

17:34

Summer Strut. So if you're a true fanboy,

17:37

fangirl out there who wants to know how

17:39

the sausage gets made at our annual Summer

17:41

Strut episode, which is coming up in August, listen

17:44

to this week's Slate Plus. We're gonna talk about

17:46

how we compile our own subplaylists. We

17:48

will have Chris Malenfee, who is also

17:51

a guest on our third segment this week, and of

17:53

course is always our co-host for the Summer Strut

17:55

each year. We'll

17:56

talk about how he handles his research. I mean,

17:58

put it this way.

17:59

48 hours of songs worth to listen to.

18:02

So there has to be some workflow planning

18:04

to get that segment together. We'll talk about that

18:07

today in Slate Plus, which, if you're a member,

18:09

you will hear after the show. And if you're not a member,

18:11

you can become one by going to slate.com slash

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culture plus. In exchange for your Slate Plus

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membership, you will get ad-free podcasts, you'll

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get bonus content like the segment I just described,

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and best of all, you'll get unlimited access to everything

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slash culture plus. Once again, that's slate.com

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slash culture plus.

18:36

Okay, Steve, onward.

18:38

Okay, well, writer-director Christopher

18:40

Nolan took on an immense task when he

18:42

decided to adapt American Prometheus,

18:45

the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of J.

18:47

Robert Oppenheimer, the American

18:49

physicist who oversaw the efforts to build the

18:51

first atomic bomb. Nolan's movie,

18:54

Oppenheimer, carries the audience through the three

18:56

major periods of Oppenheimer's life, his education

18:59

at the feet of the, like, really European

19:01

grandmasters of physics, including to

19:03

a degree Einstein, but Niels Bohr, various

19:05

others, his heading of the Manhattan

19:08

Project, and finally, his infamous persecution

19:10

during the McCarthy period. The

19:12

movie stars Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer.

19:15

It also includes Robert Downey, Matt Damon,

19:18

and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer,

19:20

his wife. In the clip we're about to hear,

19:23

General Leslie Groves, played by

19:25

Damon, is asking Oppenheimer about the

19:27

likelihood of a nuclear apocalypse.

19:30

Let's listen. What did Fermi

19:33

mean by atmospheric ignition?

19:35

Well, we had a moment where it looked like the chain reaction

19:38

from an atomic

19:38

device might never stop. Setting

19:42

fire to the atmosphere. And was

19:44

Fermi still taking side bets on it? Called

19:47

it Gallows humor.

19:51

Are we saying there's a chance

19:54

that when we push that button, we

19:56

destroy the world? Nothing in our research

19:59

over three years supports that.

19:59

that conclusion, except it's

20:02

the most remote possibility. How

20:05

remote, chances are near zero. Near

20:09

zero. What do you

20:11

want from theory alone?

20:15

Zero would be nice.

20:19

Julia, let me break with form. We're doing

20:21

two movies. I'll start with you. What did you make

20:23

of this sprawling biopic?

20:27

I had two reactions. One,

20:29

I am not Christopher Nolan's

20:32

biggest fan. I liked

20:34

his Dark Knight. I often leave

20:36

his movies feeling unsettled

20:40

and alienated in a way that

20:42

perhaps speaks to his filmmaking power,

20:45

but his work does not

20:47

speak to me.

20:49

I liked this more than

20:51

most of his other movies, I think because there

20:53

are ways in which it is more conservative

20:55

and

20:58

a little bit buttoned up and a little bit

21:00

almost like

21:02

Oscar Beatty or something. Like

21:04

this movie is more conservative in

21:07

its tone and structure than

21:09

some of his other movies, which maybe just marks me

21:11

as an unadventurous simp. I don't

21:13

know. But I did not have the

21:15

feeling, I sometimes have finishing Christopher Nolan

21:18

movie of feeling like jangled and alienated

21:20

and like unhappy. On

21:22

the other hand, what a weird thing

21:24

to say about his movie about the biggest

21:27

horror of human invention. Like,

21:30

isn't the reason we should have been excited for Christopher

21:33

Nolan to be making this movie that I should have

21:35

left it feeling more jangled

21:37

and alienated and horrified than I ever

21:41

had been by a film before.

21:44

I guess I'm puzzled, Julia, by what you mean

21:46

by conservative and its structure. I

21:48

guess you mean conventional, but

21:51

then it makes me feel like we saw two different movies because

21:53

the structure of this film struck me as really,

21:55

really unconventional and at times somewhat

21:58

incomprehensible.

21:59

haven't talked about the fact that it's in both color

22:02

and black and white, and the color and black and white

22:04

strands mean two different things, which it took

22:06

me a conversation after the movie to figure out

22:08

that the color sections are basically

22:11

Oppenheimer's point of view and memory, and the black

22:13

and white are slightly more objective

22:15

or more aligned with the point of view of the Robert

22:18

Downey Jr. character, Louis Strauss, who

22:20

becomes the big rival

22:22

or I guess nemesis of Oppenheimer toward

22:25

the end. So there's the black and white

22:27

color strands, there's also multiple time

22:29

frames being jumped among in a way that

22:31

I didn't think was handled with that much dexterity,

22:33

honestly. I feel like the movie has

22:35

a strange after the test of

22:38

the atom bomb, which you could say is the sort of action

22:40

climax of the movie. There's a good 45

22:43

minutes to an hour of movie left, which is all

22:45

the black and white Robert Downey Jr. timeline,

22:49

which contains many great scenes and

22:51

has some very powerful moments, but it feels

22:53

to me like there's just extra

22:55

movies stuck on at the end of the climax

22:57

of a movie. Anyway, there were a lot of

22:59

things

22:59

about this movie structurally that struck

23:02

me as both unconventional and not necessarily

23:04

successful, but I have such ambivalent

23:07

feelings about this movie. I feel like it

23:09

dragged me through stretches

23:11

of kind of profound beauty and intensity,

23:14

followed by unintentional laughter at ridiculously

23:17

bad dialogue. The women characters,

23:20

both of them, all two of them in this huge

23:22

vast cast, there's essentially two women who matter

23:25

at all and say anything. And they're both

23:27

Oppenheimer's romantic interests, his wife, played

23:29

by Emily

23:29

Blunt, and his, I guess you'd call her mistress, his

23:32

ex-girlfriend who he has a tryst with, played by

23:34

Florence Pugh, both in

23:36

real life, fascinating women, if you read

23:38

a bit about their background. But

23:41

both in the movie, I felt really reduced

23:43

to

23:44

reacting and sexually

23:47

responding to Oppenheimer. That's the first time

23:49

Nolan has really ever put sex scenes in

23:51

his movies and both the sex scenes or post-sex

23:53

scenes, I guess, I found

23:56

unintentionally laughable. I mean, there were

23:58

just, there's so much bomb

23:59

and Christopher Nolan always, and maybe Julia,

24:02

that's why you haven't responded to him in the past. It's

24:05

hard for me to get emotionally involved with his movies because

24:07

of how powerful they are trying

24:09

to be as they slam things in your face, and I think

24:11

that clip we heard was a good demonstration

24:13

of my least favorite thing about this movie, which is also

24:16

true of almost every Christopher Nolan movie, which

24:18

is that the score, which is a very powerful,

24:20

beautifully moody, eerie

24:23

score by a Swedish composer named Ludwig Gorinson, plays

24:26

under every single second of

24:28

dialogue. I swear to God that the only silence

24:29

in this movie is the moment that

24:32

the test bomb explodes when you have this, I

24:34

think, really beautifully done, very

24:36

powerful sequence of them, you know, setting

24:38

up the test in the New Mexico desert, and

24:41

at the moment of the explosion of the test bomb, there are

24:44

a few merciful, strange to call anything

24:46

at that moment, merciful, but the silence

24:48

is welcome, and the silence is eloquent in that moment,

24:51

but there's just something about putting

24:53

a hat on a hat, you know, or gilding the lily

24:56

in the way that he's always just like thickly

24:59

buttering,

24:59

pounding music over every single

25:02

second. It made me feel like I was in a trailer, and

25:04

it kept me emotionally distanced from the movie, but

25:07

it's just, you can see how ambivalent I am by

25:09

the fact that I'm moving from, you know, saying

25:11

these

25:12

very praiseful things to just saying, like, get

25:14

me out of here, I can't take it anymore.

25:16

Right. I mean, what struck me is that this

25:18

movie, as much as Barbie comes

25:21

with a built-in dilemma thanks to

25:23

its quote-unquote IP, its source material,

25:26

Barbie, you have to thread this needle between

25:28

her being a career-oriented

25:31

feminist icon and her being a sex object,

25:34

and Gerwig does it beautifully. When

25:36

you're talking about the creation of the atomic bomb, you're

25:38

talking about the golden age of heroic

25:41

physics, as

25:44

it involved Einstein, Bohr,

25:46

Heisenberg,

25:46

Schrodinger. I mean, names

25:49

people know to this day, the

25:51

mapping of the atom and the attempt

25:54

of the human imagination to come to grips with the

25:56

quanta, where the quantum realm, where

25:59

cause and effect, Newtonian cause, in

26:01

effect, don't seem to hold.

26:04

Then there's this attempt to build the

26:06

ultimately destructive weapon in order to end

26:08

the war.

26:10

And that was heartbreaking for most

26:12

of these European physicists, many

26:14

of whom were Jewish, who were pacifists, who

26:16

were Kantian, or they were sort

26:18

of steeped in a very European tradition

26:21

of thought. And so it's

26:24

funny, there's a weird combination

26:26

of dread and rah-rah behind the

26:28

whole story, and lionizing

26:31

and elevation at the same time. You

26:34

have to pay heed to the agony of

26:36

conscience that

26:38

is this weapon and the era that it

26:40

unleashed. Nolan

26:42

faces another problem, which is this

26:45

is a huge story.

26:47

This is one of my favorite nonfiction books ever

26:49

written, that it's based on American Prometheus.

26:52

And I was shocked at how much of it

26:54

he attempted to condense and push

26:57

into a three-hour framework.

26:59

It's impossible. I happen to

27:02

know all of these characters and

27:04

care about each one of them. I'm like, oh,

27:06

that's Vannevar Bush, that's James Conant,

27:08

that's Hans Bethe, that's Enrico

27:10

Fermi. I have a weird preoccupation

27:13

with the subject. So for me, it was like kind

27:15

of fanfic heaven or something.

27:17

Oh, wow. I didn't know you'd read the

27:19

biography it's based on. And biographies or

27:21

autobiographies of some of those physicists.

27:23

I mean, because it was in some sense

27:26

sort of the defining pivot of the 20th

27:28

century and maybe modernity, right? And

27:30

what is it like for a single human

27:33

being to bear the burden of

27:35

perhaps introducing the technology

27:37

on whatever timeline? Maybe it's

27:39

five years, maybe it's a thousand

27:42

years by which the human species

27:44

literally commit suicide, right? With

27:47

the push of a button. Like that was sort

27:49

of on Oppenheimer's conscience. And so this

27:51

both elevation of him by like,

27:53

for example, Time Magazine, he makes the cover

27:55

of Time Magazine,

27:58

you know, as the father of the atomic bomb.

27:59

in the face of American science, of global

28:02

science, combined with you

28:05

are Prometheus. You really did introduce

28:07

this force of ultimate destruction into the

28:09

world. I mean, I admired the attempt to do

28:12

it. And we should say, Dana, Killian

28:14

Murphy is, I think, amazing

28:17

as Oppenheimer. I mean, he really occupies

28:19

the skin of this human being and

28:22

all of that dread, all of that pride,

28:25

competitive pride, all

28:27

of his weirdness Oppenheimer

28:28

was a... He's such a demanding role because he's so

28:31

eccentric, right? He's such a peculiar

28:33

person. So how

28:36

could you not have a movie whose virtues

28:38

and defects were sort of in this sort

28:41

of Schrodinger-like way, you know,

28:43

the cats both alive and dead at the same time? Like

28:45

the movie is both wonderful and an utter

28:47

failure at the same time. It'll almost have to be.

28:49

Yeah. And if nothing else, Stephen, I mean,

28:52

it's original. You know, that's something that in

28:54

talking about the larger Barbenheimer phenomenon

28:56

of this weekend and trying to kind of figure out what

28:59

was it that set these two movies apart and

29:01

made this happen, you know, besides the sort of

29:03

funny collision of two such different movies on

29:06

the same weekend. I mean, Sam

29:08

Adams has a great piece in Slate about this,

29:10

you know, that he wrote post the weekend and was

29:12

essentially pointing to the fact that they're both movies of ideas

29:14

in a way, right? I mean, obviously, on

29:17

two very different registers, comic and tragic,

29:19

but they're both movies that are by writer-director

29:22

auteurs, right, who are grappling

29:24

with big ideas. And the fact

29:26

that audiences responded to both of those two things

29:29

together just takes me back again to, you know,

29:31

me waving pom-poms for the movies.

29:33

Like I am not the biggest fan of the movie Oppenheimer

29:36

as a complete achievement. You know, I'm not

29:38

one of those people coming out saying, I'm devastated.

29:40

Chris Nolan has made his masterpiece. But

29:43

I feel awe and admiration for it. I'm

29:46

extremely glad he made it. It also made me

29:48

want to read the book American Prometheus that it's

29:50

based on. And you know, just to think

29:52

through this turning point in American

29:54

history and that to make mass

29:57

audiences respond to those complex

29:59

sets of...

29:59

of feelings and thoughts is not nothing.

30:03

I'm curious what you guys made of the critique

30:06

of whether the film does

30:08

a good job

30:09

portraying the horror

30:12

of the bomb though. Like in

30:14

my estimation, it does a

30:17

really nice job. And to me, the cross

30:19

cutting and the jumping around and the sort of

30:21

urgent pace of the first third

30:23

of it

30:24

actually does a pretty remarkable job

30:27

of giving you a sense of his intellectual history

30:29

and his intellectual context. I mean, I guess I

30:31

haven't read enough biographies of Fermi

30:33

to know how much I missed, but it felt

30:35

like the movie took care to situate him and

30:39

constructed that part of itself with

30:41

dramatic urgency and intellectual rigor

30:44

and clarity. But

30:47

there's also been this critique that this film, it's

30:51

almost entirely full

30:53

of white men. There are very few women in it. It

30:55

does not show anyone in

30:57

Japan.

30:58

It does not have scenes

31:00

of Nagasaki. It does not, you

31:03

know, there's been accusations that

31:04

it's sort of portraying this horror

31:07

visited upon a whole country through

31:09

the eyes of a white guy in America. I

31:11

think, I don't think it's a fair critique of

31:13

the film to say that it's not trying to be about

31:15

that horror. It definitely is. And it's making

31:18

different choices about how that

31:20

horror could and could not be known by

31:22

a white man in the desert. Who

31:25

no longer has control of what he wrought, but

31:28

did you think it was effective? Like, did you think,

31:31

I mean, that was the other thing I was left with is like, I'm not

31:33

sure I was made to think anything new or

31:35

more deeply about nuclear power

31:37

than I came into this movie

31:40

thinking. Like did this movie

31:42

move you? Did it scare you? Did

31:44

it

31:45

force you to reckon with that

31:47

history in a new way?

31:49

Yeah, Julia, I mean, part of my weekend long deep

31:51

dive into both of these movies is that I did

31:53

read a lot of response threads of people pushing

31:57

back on the movie for being about

31:59

one man's life.

31:59

interior experience almost as much

32:02

as it is about the world history that he changed.

32:05

And I think my response to that would be, I mean, first

32:07

of all, it is a biography of a

32:09

specific man, right? It can't be all things

32:11

to all people. And I think that it would have weakened the

32:14

moral force of the movie and made it more patronizing

32:16

toward, you know, other

32:18

cultures if there had been some sort of montage

32:22

of stock footage at the end of the horrors

32:24

of Hiroshima. That would not feel like it was part

32:26

of the same movie. And it would not

32:28

feel like it was giving any more scope to

32:31

those victims. And it's hard to see how a movie

32:33

this size about those specific

32:35

events could have expanded to include

32:38

the experience of hundreds of thousands of more

32:40

people without

32:41

being incredibly reductionist about it, right?

32:44

So I don't really see a fix to

32:46

that within what this movie is setting

32:48

out to do, which is, you know, adapt the story of

32:50

this one man's life. I

32:53

also think there are moments in the movie, small

32:55

but significant moments, including a moment when,

32:58

you know, a bunch of government officials and scientists

33:00

meet together to decide, literally decide, which

33:03

cities to drop the bomb on. And I think possibly

33:05

have a discussion, which I know they had in real life anyway,

33:08

right, Steve, about bombing an uninhabited

33:10

island first to demonstrate the power of the bomb,

33:12

right, which they then decide not to do. And

33:14

there's a moment that one of the officials says something

33:16

like, oh, we can't bomb Kyoto because my wife

33:19

and I spent our honeymoon there. And it's this

33:21

beautiful historic town in Japan, right?

33:23

I mean, there certainly is not any

33:25

lionization of the figures who made

33:27

those decisions or of the decision itself. But

33:30

the purpose of the movie is not to be a

33:33

document of peace activism, right? It's to

33:35

document a moment in history

33:37

when technology changed in a way that

33:40

made war a completely different and much more

33:42

horrifying thing. And I think, Julia, I did

33:44

feel the horror of that at moments, not

33:46

maybe at the moment of coming out

33:48

of the movie, because of that long tail I

33:50

mentioned, where we're just thinking about the Robert Downey Jr.

33:53

character who, by the way, Robert Downey Jr. crushes

33:56

his performance in that role. He's absolutely wonderful.

34:00

But

34:00

I did feel that

34:01

by moments. I would also say that

34:03

there's an entire tradition of extraordinary

34:06

Japanese and other non-American

34:09

movies about those events that people

34:11

should turn to if they want to see extraordinary

34:14

cinematic depictions of the aftermath

34:16

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including Hiroshima

34:19

Mona Moore, Black Rain, Grave

34:21

of the Fireflies. I mean, almost any Japanese

34:24

movie about the aftermath of World War II

34:26

is going to be the place to go and have

34:28

that experience. Yeah,

34:30

fair enough. All right, the movie is Oppenheimer. It's

34:32

out in theaters. We

34:35

have interestingly ambivalent

34:37

feelings about it. What are yours? Shoot

34:39

us an email. All right, let's move on.

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37:06

Okay, well, the country artist Jason Aldean

37:09

is coming out with his 11th album. He's released,

37:11

if you haven't heard, the lead single

37:13

from that record. It's called Try That

37:16

in a Small Town. And

37:18

it's basically a series of MAGA

37:20

adjacent MAGA inspired dog

37:22

whistles, which have been called and I think

37:25

quite rightly, racist. It's

37:28

filled with all kinds of mentions

37:30

of carjacking, robberies, flag burning,

37:32

and the tagline is if you're looking for a

37:34

fight, try that in a small town. It

37:37

just has an aura of vigilante

37:39

violence. It was only heightened when the video

37:41

for the song was released. The

37:44

opening shot of the video is a Tennessee

37:46

courthouse. Turns out it was the site

37:48

of an infamous lynching. All right,

37:51

we're joined by Chris Malanfee, host of the Hit

37:53

Parade podcast and of course, slate

37:55

writer and chartologist. Chris, welcome back to

37:57

the show. Thanks, Steve. We take care

37:59

of our own, don't we? We

38:01

have a lot to cover here.

38:03

The song, the video, the history

38:06

that arises out of Aldean himself.

38:08

Before we get to that, why don't we just loathe

38:11

some as it is. I

38:13

think we do have to listen to some of that song,

38:16

so let's cue that up.

38:18

Suck a punch somebody on a

38:20

sidewalk, carjacking

38:22

old lady at a red light, pull

38:25

a gun on the owner of a liquor

38:27

store, you think it's cool, light

38:30

to fool if you like, cuss

38:32

out a cop spitting his face,

38:35

stomp on the flag and light it

38:37

up, yeah

38:40

you think it's tough, well

38:42

try that in a small town,

38:46

see how far you make it down

38:49

the road, around

38:52

here we take care of our

38:54

own, you cross that line it

38:56

won't take long for you to

38:58

find out, I recommend you don't,

39:02

try that in a small town.

39:06

Ugh, somehow that I recommend you

39:08

don't is like, yeah, there's something so

39:11

unctuous and like faux courtly

39:14

about this deeply sinister threatening

39:16

song, I

39:18

have likened that line to the

39:21

old mobster cliche, that's a nice blah

39:23

you've got there, be a shame something happened to it. Yeah

39:26

my first reaction is are we sure this is an Andy

39:29

Samberg, it just feels like an S especially

39:31

with the video, it's so over the top and

39:33

my second reaction was you're telling me it

39:36

took

39:36

four or five people to write

39:38

this awful song, that's incredible

39:41

to me, Chris, for those

39:43

who don't know which I'm going to guess is the

39:45

vast majority of our audience, tell

39:48

us who Jason Aldean is, he's a veteran

39:50

right, this is not a breakthrough for him.

39:53

Not at all, Jason Aldean has been a country

39:55

star for well over a decade since

39:57

I would say the mid aughts, funnily

39:59

enough,

39:59

Not to use this as an excuse to

40:02

promote my forthcoming book, but I had to write about

40:04

Jason Aldean in my forthcoming book about the Lil

40:06

Nas X song, Old Town Road, because

40:08

Jason Aldean, one of his biggest hits, way back

40:11

in 2010, is a cover of a song called Dirt

40:13

Road Anthem, in which Jason Aldean

40:16

raps. And it's in

40:18

a weird way a kind of predecessor to

40:20

Old Town Road in that it's a big hit by

40:23

a country star rapping.

40:25

Back in the day, Potswum was a place to go.

40:27

Load a truck up, hit the dirt road, jump

40:29

the bar, why spread the word, light the bonfire,

40:32

and call the girls King and the can and the

40:34

Marlboro man, Jack and Jim, or a few

40:36

good men. We had learned how to kiss and cuss and fight

40:38

too. Better watch out for the boys and blue

40:40

and all this. But he's had all sorts of hits, multiple

40:43

number one hits on the country charts.

40:46

He's not unlike Morgan Wallin, whom

40:48

we talked about a couple of months ago, or Luke

40:51

Combs, who is currently enjoying a big, big hit

40:53

with a cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. He's

40:55

not a crossover star. He pretty much lives in

40:57

the world of

40:59

country music.

41:01

And this song is the ultimate

41:03

dog whistle to end all dog whistles. I mean,

41:05

and it's not even a dog whistle. It's kind of blunt.

41:08

You know, some of the choice lyrics,

41:11

you know, got a gun that my granddad gave me. They

41:13

say one day they're gonna round up. That

41:15

shit might fly in the city. Good luck.

41:18

Yeah, I'm so glad we're talking about this this week, Chris.

41:20

And the more, the deeper down I drill

41:22

into the story around this song, not

41:24

just the reprehensible lyrics

41:27

themselves and the video being

41:29

filmed in front of a famous lynching site, et cetera,

41:31

et cetera, but the way that

41:34

Aldine's response to the backlash

41:36

has been to obfuscate the

41:38

song's meaning in a very canny way.

41:40

I mean, this is clearly the

41:42

language that he's chosen to defend himself

41:45

in the song is just so

41:47

gaslighting. It's so carefully obfuscating

41:49

the violence that is clearly at the heart

41:52

of the song's message or the threat of violence.

41:54

And I just wanted to read a quote from something that Aldine

41:56

himself said on stage in Cincinnati this

41:59

past weekend. And right before performing

42:01

the song, basically sort of whipping up the crowd

42:03

to anticipate his current big

42:06

hit. He says, I

42:07

gotta tell you guys, man, it's been a long

42:10

ass week. It's been a long week and I've seen

42:12

a lot of stuff. I've seen a lot of stuff suggesting

42:14

I'm this, suggesting I'm that.

42:16

What I am is a proud American. I'm proud

42:18

to be from here. I love our country. I

42:20

want to see it restored to what it once was before

42:22

all this bullshit started happening to us. I

42:25

love our country. I love my family. And

42:27

I will do anything to protect that. I'll tell you

42:29

that right now. So

42:31

everything he says on the surface, right, could

42:33

be sort of Norman Rockwell,

42:36

right? I believe in the values of our country and

42:38

my family. But the obfuscation

42:41

of

42:42

all this bullshit started happening to us,

42:44

right? You kind of want to stop right there,

42:47

have a journalist, you know, have Chris Malanfy

42:49

come out there on stage with a microphone and say, Mr.

42:51

Haldine, could we get into what you mean about

42:54

all this bullshit that's been happening to us

42:56

that you want to stand up against? And

42:59

the video really does the exact same work. I mean,

43:01

many people have pointed out how the

43:03

footage from the video, which is sort of a vague street

43:05

violence that isn't really placed anywhere,

43:08

comes from all over the place and all over the time.

43:10

Some of it's from Europe. Some of it's from 2010, right? I

43:13

mean, it is from basically any sort of vision

43:15

of urban disorder that he wants is sort

43:17

of thrown up on the screen as this idea of

43:20

what is vaguely happening in a small town.

43:22

And it's just the most dangerous straw man argument

43:24

you could imagine because it's essentially doing what

43:27

Fox News and places like that do. Show

43:29

us some

43:30

disquieting street violence and

43:32

imply that that's about to happen to grandma if you

43:34

don't get your gun. Well, and

43:36

it's also missing footage of one

43:39

recent, quite conspicuous incident

43:42

of people being violent

43:45

in a rejection

43:46

of classic American values

43:48

like voting for who becomes president, which

43:52

is one of the things about the video that belies

43:54

its supposed, oh, I'm just nostalgic

43:57

neutrality. Yeah. And in terms

43:59

of the.

44:00

statements Aldean has made. He made a more formal

44:02

statement on Twitter or I guess X as

44:04

I'm now obligated to call it About

44:06

a week ago. Sorry.

44:07

In fact,

44:10

you are forbidden to call it that. Fine. So

44:12

when we were still calling it Twitter, Jason Aldean

44:14

said, quote, in the past 24 hours I've been accused

44:17

of releasing a pro lynching song, a song

44:19

that has been out since May and was subject

44:21

to the comparison that I, direct quote,

44:23

was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM

44:26

protests. These references are not

44:28

only meritless but dangerous. There is

44:30

not a single lyric in the song that references

44:32

race or points to it and there isn't

44:34

a single video clip that isn't real news footage.

44:37

And while I can try and respect others to have

44:39

their own interpretation of a song with music, this

44:41

one goes too far. Unquote. I

44:43

mean, I love your word Dana gaslighting

44:46

because he seems to be hanging on the

44:48

very tissue thin Excuse

44:51

that because he doesn't actually say anything

44:53

about race, right? And he's

44:55

using actual news footage. Somehow that inoculates

44:58

him from

44:59

Racism, let alone the fact that he's not addressing

45:02

the courthouse upon which he

45:05

shot his video. But, you know,

45:07

let's let's even take that out of it and just treat

45:09

the song as a primary text. It

45:12

is still

45:13

Fundamentally about, you

45:15

know, telling those uppity

45:18

protesters. What's what at the

45:20

point of a gun?

45:21

You know to move the conversation away from

45:23

the race issue for a moment I just feel

45:26

like gun laws and gun control is such

45:28

a huge part of this conversation too because

45:30

I mean my jaw just hit the Floor when I read

45:32

in researching this segment that Jason Aldean

45:34

was the artist playing in 2017 at

45:37

that Las Vegas music festival that

45:39

was the biggest mass shooting I believe in

45:41

US history So his during his

45:43

set that 60 people were killed

45:45

and four hundred and thirteen people were wounded

45:48

by a mass shooter Something that in the

45:50

aftermath I think he responded to with some

45:53

sympathy toward the idea of safer

45:55

gun laws But that clearly there's

45:57

a lot of backsliding going on in this

45:59

song that is

45:59

essentially anthem

46:02

and defensive guns. Yeah,

46:03

a couple things to

46:06

say. One is that it seems to me this song

46:08

comes out of two converging traditions.

46:11

Let's say

46:12

tradition 1A is, you

46:15

know, the right in America in the

46:17

60s seized on the

46:19

unrest and eventually chaos at Berkeley,

46:22

Michigan, Columbia, predominantly,

46:25

you know, the work of white student protesters

46:28

because that allowed them to say the words law

46:30

and order over and over and over again. Reagan

46:33

did it in 66 on his way to becoming governor

46:35

of California and Nixon on the way to becoming

46:37

president in 68. What

46:40

their audience knew is that they were winking

46:42

and saying, you know, I'm really talking about the

46:44

states, both Watts and Berkeley,

46:46

right? It's totally colorblind. It's just

46:49

disorder, but it allowed,

46:51

you know, a mainstream politician to be

46:53

racist and alibi it. And this

46:56

is exactly what this does. There are white protesters

46:58

throughout the video. It's, you know, a

47:00

flag burner might

47:02

just as well be a, you know, a

47:04

Swarthmore student as anybody

47:06

else. So it's just really carefully

47:08

alibi. The second tradition it comes out of is,

47:11

you know, the Oki from Muskogee,

47:13

you know, tradition

47:15

of Merle Haggard of country

47:17

music sort of asserting itself as anti-cosmopolitan

47:20

and specifically in

47:22

some ways Southern. But I just

47:24

want to say one thing very quickly. I went

47:27

to the internet in search of violent

47:29

crime rates by state, okay?

47:32

And of the 16 highest crime

47:34

rate states, 13 are predominantly

47:38

rural red states. You know,

47:41

the idea that social disorder expanding

47:43

on Julia's point, the idea that social disorder

47:46

is principally a function of quote-unquote

47:48

urban America is a completely

47:51

mythic. That's not true. And secondly,

47:54

clearly a racist dog whistle.

47:57

Yeah, I mean there is a long

47:59

tradition.

47:59

really dating to the beginning of what we

48:02

know as country music in the 1920s, of

48:04

prizing the small town over the big city.

48:06

And before I go further, I should highly

48:08

recommend to folks a fantastic

48:10

article by Amanda Marie Martinez that ran an

48:13

NPR a few days ago titled,

48:15

Jason Aldean's Small Town is part of a long legacy

48:18

with a very dark side, in which she basically

48:20

runs down the long history

48:22

of small town prizing.

48:24

The small town is where the good people are. The small

48:27

town is where the rural idyllic life

48:29

is, versus the big bad city. And

48:31

to be fair, that trope has appeared in rock

48:33

songs as well. It's not as if it's exclusive to country

48:36

music, but no genre has played

48:39

that trope harder than country music. And

48:41

yes, you mentioned Okey from Muskogee, the

48:43

legendary song, I'll say legendary, because

48:46

I think it kind of is, by Merle

48:48

Haggard, a number one country hit in 1969. For

48:51

those who care, it did cross pop, but it only

48:53

peaked at number 41 on the pop chart. The

48:55

fact that a Merle Haggard song did that well is

48:57

remarkable. It shows what a political

48:59

football

48:59

and an object of debate that song

49:02

was in 1969. And maybe we should hear

49:04

a few lyrics from that. Let's

49:06

say classic Okey from Muskogee.

49:09

We don't smoke marijuana

49:11

in Muskogee. We

49:16

don't take no trips on

49:18

LSD. We

49:23

don't burn no drive carts

49:25

down on Main Street. We

49:29

like living right, being

49:33

free.

49:35

Chris, one thing I'm curious if you could speak to, given

49:37

that lineage, is like, to

49:40

what degree is a segment

49:43

like this part of the marketing

49:45

plan for this song? Like,

49:47

does this song only function with

49:50

a

49:50

backlash from coastal

49:52

elites or whatever

49:54

we are on the show, the

49:56

type of person who doesn't

49:59

understand what it's like League to be from a small town

50:01

or whatever it is. I think we've seen this a couple

50:03

times recently with sort of a public

50:06

internet outcry over

50:08

the ethics of country

50:10

lyrics and then the country stars only getting

50:12

more and more successful. How

50:15

much of that reaction is baked in to

50:17

the plan for a song like this and what

50:19

kind of

50:22

impact is this going to have on Aldean,

50:24

the song,

50:25

his career, its chart performance,

50:27

all the rest? Yeah, that question

50:29

is, I will say, cynical and spot on.

50:33

Because truthfully, as Aldean himself

50:35

points out in his statement, the song's been out since

50:37

May and the spark was lit

50:40

a couple weeks ago when the video

50:42

dropped and people sort of

50:44

looked more closely at the lyrics and

50:47

pointed out the fact that the video

50:49

takes place at a former lynching site.

50:53

And

50:54

without question, the controversy is

50:56

what has made this song a massive hit. It wasn't

50:58

even that big of a country radio hit.

51:01

It is now a bigger country radio hit. Even country

51:03

radio, you would think they would be lighting the fire.

51:05

They're playing this, but it's only number 25 on country

51:08

airplay this week because country radio

51:10

wants some controversy, but modest

51:13

controversy. They don't want to ignite

51:15

any more than they have to. It's

51:18

number one on the overall country chart because

51:20

of all the digital data that's poured into

51:22

it. But

51:23

the hardcore right

51:26

audience will fuel

51:28

activity, whether it's at the box offices

51:30

we're seeing right now or at

51:33

digital services, they will fuel

51:35

something up the charts. But

51:39

there's a limit and a hard ceiling to

51:41

some of this consumption. But as

51:43

we have seen this year with country crossing

51:45

over on the pop charts, now

51:47

that we have just very

51:49

finely granular digital

51:51

data, we no longer can regard

51:54

a song like

51:56

try that in a small town as a sidebar

51:58

to the pop conversation. because, you

52:01

know, this is not Oki from Muskogee peaking at number 41

52:03

in 1969. This is a Jason

52:05

Aldean song peaking at number two in 2023. And

52:08

it's part of the conversation whether you like it or not.

52:11

All right. Well, Chris, as always, it's a pleasure to have you

52:13

come on and give us the

52:15

deep history and context, even

52:18

for something as lamentable as this. Come

52:20

back soon.

52:21

Okay.

52:23

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52:57

All right. Now is the moment in our podcast and we endorse

52:59

Dana. What do you have? All right. But

53:03

because my whole theme this week is yay

53:05

movies and theaters go, go, go. I'm going

53:07

to endorse another boat who's rising

53:09

tide, I hope is lifted by the barbenheimer

53:11

moment that's in theaters right now. It's called

53:14

Theater Camp and it's absolutely

53:16

delightful. I can't wait to talk about it. Maybe

53:18

with you guys on the show, off the show, I just

53:20

encourage everyone to go take your kid

53:23

if they're an older kid. I think any kid over about 10 would

53:25

love this. If they're a theater kid, like my kid, they

53:27

would flip for it. And I will tell you nothing more

53:30

about it except that it is

53:30

Ben Platt and Molly Gordon as

53:33

two theater camp counselors and with a

53:35

bunch of incredible middle schoolers, you know,

53:38

learning to sing, dance and put on a show.

53:40

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, dying to

53:42

see it. Julia, what do you have? Okay.

53:46

This may be like when I endorsed Chinatown. I

53:48

have not been a big otolengi cooker

53:51

in my life. Like

53:52

I know everybody went through the otolengi phase, but

53:55

I just have never made a ton of his recipes, but

53:57

I finally tried one that recently

53:59

appeared in the

53:59

the New York Times, zucchini pasta with crispy

54:02

capers and pistachios. This

54:04

is the exact kind of recipe I don't recommend.

54:07

It requires you to individually fry

54:10

basil leaves, which is very laborious, although

54:12

it makes them look like this kind

54:14

of crispy, glassy stained glass

54:16

quality. It essentially asks

54:18

you to cook

54:20

pasta and zucchini as though you

54:22

are making risotto. Like you kind of reduce

54:24

and constantly stir the pasta in

54:27

broth. It's vegan. It

54:30

is a

54:31

laborious showstopper, but worth

54:33

it. So if any of that sounds good

54:35

to you, try it. And if the notion of deep frying

54:38

a basil leaf seems ridiculous, I

54:40

see you and feel free to skip. But zucchini

54:43

pasta with crispy capers and pistachios by

54:46

Yota Motolenghi. Julia, I endorse you

54:48

making that for me next time I come to visit you and

54:50

me not having to make it, but getting to eat it. I

54:53

will do that. Our zucchinis are coming in

54:56

here in Los Angeles. So I

54:58

will make it with homegrown zucs if

55:01

you require.

55:01

So a couple

55:04

of weeks ago, I think I endorsed the book Diary

55:06

of a Foreigner in Paris by Curzio Malaparte.

55:09

We got an email

55:11

from the translator. It's originally written in

55:13

Italian saying, lovely

55:15

endorsement, thank you so much. I'm glad you recognized

55:17

the book. But that passage that you read actually

55:20

is a translation like my labor and my

55:22

artistry went into rendering that in

55:24

English. Stephen

55:26

Twilly, the translator is absolutely right.

55:28

It's beautifully written only

55:31

because I have it in his beautifully

55:33

rendered English. So I wanted to

55:35

shout him out very quickly. And then

55:38

of course, Tony Bennett has died, the

55:40

great, great American singer. I

55:42

mean, as between Sinatra

55:44

and Bennett to me, there's just no competition.

55:47

I think Bennett is just the great

55:49

golden voice of one of them,

55:51

of the American song book. And

55:53

if you're looking for something it is to listen to,

55:56

I mean, I love all of his collaborations

55:58

with the pianist, Bill

55:59

Evans. but also his live at Carnegie

56:01

Hall, which I hadn't discovered until

56:04

recently, but I'm really digging it.

56:45

Julia, thank you so much. Thanks, Steve.

56:48

Thanks, Dana. It was a pleasure. You'll

56:50

find links to some of the things we talked about today at our

56:52

show page. That's slate.com slash culturefest.

56:55

And you can email us at culturefest at slate.com.

56:58

Our introductory music is by the composer Nicholas

57:00

Bertel. Our production assistant is Kat Hong.

57:03

Our producer is Cameron Drews. For

57:05

Dana Stevens and Julia Turner, I'm Steven Metcalf.

57:07

Thank you so much for joining us. We will see you soon.

57:30

Mrs. James Carl.

57:37

Mr. Conrad

57:38

McCloughy. Thank you. Thank you. We'll

57:41

see you soon. Tracy Knott. December 19, 2011.

57:44

Thai Interview. Tracy Knott Jr. July 22, 2004.

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